Russia-Ukraine Megathread 13

CARCOSA [they/them] · 2 years ago

Russia-Ukraine Megathread 13

Alaskaball [comrade/them] · 2 years ago

The nazis threw the Red army into the meat grinder by breaking the non-aggression pact and launching their invasion into the Soviet Union in the dead night and punching the defensive garrisons onto the back-foot. Treating the early war effort as "Oh they threw bodies to catch nazi bullets to stop their advance because there was nobody smart around" reduces the fascist menace to the role of but a force of mother nature instead of the calculating animals they were and ahistorically lays the blame at the feet of the presidium under the direction of Stalin to the point of philistine simplification of the events.

BaptizedNRG [he/him] · 2 years ago

The idea that any and all defense against invasion must never be critiqued for needlessly wasting lives is ridiculous. Stalin had no control over whether the Nazis would invade, of course. I'm criticizing him over the things he DID have control over, like the penal battalions and blocking detachments that wasted manpower.

You keep countering as if I am criticizing anything other than the concrete actions of Joseph Stalin. I'm not criticizing the Red Army, I'm not criticizing Stalin for the fact that Nazis invaded, I'm just criticizing Stalin's actions at the beginning of the war. The idea that a leader should be beyond criticism is worse than even a liberal's caricature of Stalin.

Alaskaball [comrade/them] · 2 years ago

If you actually followed historical materialism like a Marxist and not dabble in liberal historical revisionism like a damn gamer saying "here's how Hitler could have won ww2" or some such hog-slop, you'd understand that in the shoes of the men of the day that while an all-out mobilization was being organized, actions to delay and draw in the fascist army groups at a controlled pace, and not allow them to break through defensive lines and start running wild in encircling and destroying defensive groups as was done several times during the long retreats, - in order to enable the withdrawal of the people and quickly transported resources to the rear and to sabotage and destroy whatever resources that could not be taken in order to ensure it wouldn't be used against them - were critical to the retreating defensive. Nitpicking about "wasted manpower" in a war against extermination that does not analyze in what ways such lives should have been better spent but instead alludes to liberal moral grand-standing and phrase-mongering loudly declares to anyone reading that you don't really care about the cruel and necessary choices and sacrifices that had to be made - about the blood shed by men and women greater than both of us - but that you care more about contorting your arguments into internet-points winning dunks.

and since you made a second comment as though to seemingly make a point, I'll respond to it here to save myself time.

I order that commanders and political officers >who, during combat tear off their insignia and >desert to the rear or surrender to the enemy, be >considered malicious deserters whose families >are subject to arrest as a family, for violation of >an oath and betrayal of their homeland.

-Stalin, Order 270

Real competence there, my comrade

I point to history yet again: In a war of extermination, where the enemy has openly declared for years that they seek to emulate the U.S's genocide of the native americans on your peoples, doing anything that goes against the war effort is to go against the right of the collective people to fight for their existence. Your criticism of Stalin is that of the criticism of a liberal's criticism of Stalin.

BaptizedNRG [he/him] · 2 years ago

In the face of obvious errors, the reply "Mistakes were made, such is war," can be used to justify literally anything, and as such is meaningless.

So the families of deserters should be subject to arrest, in a case of the desperate situation such that the Soviet Union found itself in? I would like you to be very clear on this. Was it likely an effective policy, or even a defensible policy, to arrest the family of deserters?

Alaskaball [comrade/them] · 2 years ago

In the face of obvious errors, the reply “Mistakes were made, such is war,” can be used to justify literally anything, and as such is meaningless.

:citations-needed:

So the families of deserters should be subject to arrest, in a case of the desperate situation such that the Soviet Union found itself in? I would like you to be very clear on this. Was it likely an effective policy, or even a defensible policy, to arrest the family of deserters?

To be subject to arrest and investigation at the time that order 270 was given? Yes. Effective? Lets examine the full orders. and the status of the warfront at the time.

Order 270:

That commanders and political officers who, during combat tear off their insignia and desert to the rear or surrender to the enemy, be considered malicious deserters whose families are subject to arrest as a family, for violation of an oath and betrayal of their homeland.
All higher commanders and commissars are required to shoot on the spot any such deserters from among command personnel.
Encircled units and formations to selflessly fight to the last, to protect materiel like the apple of their eye, to break through from the rear of enemy troops, defeating the fascist dogs.
That every soldier is obliged, regardless of his or her position, to demand that their superiors, if part of their unit is surrounded, to fight to the end, to break through, and if a superior or a unit of the Red Army – instead of organizing resistance to the enemy – prefers to become a prisoner they should be destroyed by all means possible on land and air, and their families deprived of public benefits and assistance.
Division commanders and commissars are obliged to immediately shift from their posts commanders of battalions and regiments, who hide in crevices during battle and those who fear directing a fight on the battlefield; to reduce their positions, as impostors, to be demoted to the ranks, and when necessary to shoot them on the spot, bringing to their place bold and courageous people, from among junior command personnel or those among the ranks of the Red Army who have excelled.

In August of 1941 when this order was given, most of Belarus and the western half of Ukraine was occupied and the fascist army groups were continuing to push along the flat farmlands of southern Ukraine towards Crimea, and in the north through Estonia towards Leningrad. Through the rest of that year, the fascist armies's gains were slowed in comparison to the earlier months that the only major gains they would make occurred in the more flat lands of the central and southern sections of the USSR before being forced by the winter to settle down. Those final months of retreat bought the needed time for the establishment of the war industry east of the Urals, the tense stabilization of the central to northern lines, and giving time of the British and French militaries more breathing room while fighting in their overseas colonies while making deals with roosevelt to help out in the war effort on the down-low.

BaptizedNRG [he/him] · edit-2 2 years ago

Removed by mod